Why Vision Beats Motivation When Scaling a Business

TRANSCRIPT SUMMARY:

00:00 - Optimism Over Inspiration
03:11 - Entrepreneurial Journey Begins
08:28 - Life Underground Mining
14:03 - The AK-47 Turning Point
16:16 - Collecting Different Experiences
21:41 - Selling From The Stage
25:30 - Building The Excellence Project
26:33 - The RISE Leadership Model
30:57 - Focus On Your Strengths
34:39 - Creating CEO Transformation
39:57 - Define Your Future Vision
43:55 - Give Up Control

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FULL TRANSCRIPT:

Rael Bricker (00:00)

inspiration fades by lunchtime when the crack hits the fan, you know, but optimism is a is a defined strategy. The first thing that Google Maps did is it asked you where do you want to go from here? It didn't say where were you yesterday? That's the first big mindset shift. Close your eyes and then imagine what the business will look like when you've achieved what you want to achieve.

Jeff Holman (00:22)

Welcome back, everybody, to the Breakout CEO podcast. I'm your host, Jeff Holman. I'm with Intellectual Strategies, a law firm that talks with or that works with a lot of innovative companies. And we see behind the scenes with CEOs that are building businesses and dealing with issues. We can't tell you their stories because they're confidential. So we talk with people who who can share behind the scenes stories with you as the audience here. And

We also talk with people who advise CEOs that are building businesses and we get the insights on the frameworks and tools and resources that they help scaling CEOs use to scale their businesses. So that's that's what we're doing here. And you're you've probably listened to some episodes before. If not, go check out some past episodes. But today we've got Rail Bricker with us to talk about both his experience a little bit as running a very large

Well, financial services business, but then also the kind of the the the advisory stuff that he does today and the keynote speaking that he does that helps CEOs build their business. Rail, it's great to have you on the show.

Rael Bricker (01:28)

Thank you, Jeff. Great to be here from from the future. I always say to every US host, because I'm it's morning here the next day already.

Jeff Holman (01:37)

Yes. that's fine. That reminds me one time. I I play soccer with my brother or football or what I don't know what they call it in Australia. Is it football? yeah. Or does football mean something else in Australia? I think there's an Australian football

Rael Bricker (01:49)

There's Australian fo i it it's yeah. There we have so many football codes in Australia it's quite interesting.

Jeff Holman (01:54)

interesting. Well, I I play I play soccer with my brother or actually futsal with my brother a couple of times a week and a group of people and when I was in I think I was either in Nepal or I was in Tanzania. I was traveling one time and it was his birthday and I you know I I texted the group out. I said hey happy birthday from the future. So I like that. Yeah. well Rail you've you've got a really comprehensive background I I I probably should say

we've just been talking a little bit here and looked at some of your background and and you you've run maybe two things that we should talk about today. So I'll just I'll mention them both, but I'll let you introduce both of them. so the audience has kind of a an idea of the the breadth of background that you bring to the conversation. You run house and home, a financial services industry, you've done a few billion dollars of of of mortgage transactions through that, it sounds like a lot.

let you expand on that. And then also you you run the excellence project. more of your your current speaking and coaching and or I don't know if coaching is right word, but you know, mentoring type of type of stuff that you do. that's a that's a full plate. Why don't you break that down for us a little bit?

Rael Bricker (03:11)

Okay. Thanks, Jeff. Good morning. I I I've always been an entrepreneur and I guess that kind of frames everything. So I started my career and and that probably puts some context around it, six thousand foot underground as an engineer. my I my first degree was in engineering, electrical engineering, but once you got to the minds I didn't care what your background was, you became an engineer, a generic engineer and

I I was twenty one to twenty three years old and at some stages I ended up with five thousand staff at that age on a gold mine working six thousand foot on the ground. So that shaped a lot of my views of the corporate world, of how to deal with people, how to be a leader without being an overbearing boss. And I think that was the the the fundamental lessons I learned there because I was so young. But I interestingly and I I get this with lots of entrepreneurs now.

I only really internalized those lessons many years later. Yeah. Like I was too young and immature and arrogant to actually understand the lessons at the time. But but, you know, jumping from there, I ended up starting my first business in nineteen ninety. And and we're talking about the breakout strategies and things that that you've done in business. in nineteen ninety I was a twenty six year old MBA graduate. I'd done my first of my master's degrees. Yeah. And we started a business in South Africa as a consulting firm. We didn't actually understand

or even think that two twenty-six year old MBAs trying to tell the world how to run their businesses, has any flaw in that model. We just couldn't see the flaw. And that was that was that was quite interesting when I go back and analyze that. Anyway, started that business and a year later we pivoted completely from a consulting firm to an education business. Yeah. And you've got to put that into a context, it was in South Africa. It was the year after Nelson Mandela was released.

And there was a massive hunger for education amongst the primarily people of color in South Africa, the black population in South Africa, who had been downtrodden under the apartheid government. And so we were in the right place at the right time. And half of business success is often that is being in the right place at the right time. And I guess being able to grab the opportunity. So we started this business. We had t we were working out of my partner's lounge room.

that was where our offices were and we we rented some premises, had twenty students in our first semester and five years later had four thousand students over six campuses.

Jeff Holman (05:47)

What what kind of stuff were you teaching? is this like leadership or just

Rael Bricker (05:51)

No, it was actually long term programs. So the challenge there was that the university system hadn't caught up with the demand for education. And so we were running l in the US the best co it would be a junior college, if you want to call it that. Yeah, not a well we were giving out d four year diplomas which were regarded as equivalent to a three year degree by the education authorities, but

There was a massive growth in private education because the university systems couldn't cope.

Jeff Holman (06:22)

I see. W was this a were these programs like publicly funded? I I haven't been to South Africa yet, so I'm not sure

Rael Bricker (06:27)

So

were they publicly funded? No. they were privately funded and and I mean I I tell stories in my in in the in the first book I wrote where a a domestic worker had saved money from every pay because she knew she had to pay for her kids' education and would literally arrive in my office and reach into her bra and take out thousands of rand to pay for her child's education. Wow.

And this mother had probably never been to school or or not been to school beyond, you know, fifth grade or sixth grade, but understood that she wanted her kids to get an education. Yeah. Yeah. So it was a great profitable business. It was a great noble business when ninety percent of our students came from disadvantaged backgrounds. Mm-hmm. and we were again, right place, right time, grew rapidly at the time and ended up with

a five thousand so fifty thousand square foot, five thousand square meter building in downtown Johannesburg, which was our head office. and in nineteen ninety-six, after being threatened in my office with an AK forty seven assault rifle, I decided it was time to exit the business. And so we didn't just exit, we actually found a small listed entity and reversed our business into them. Mm-hmm and then my

partner and I went we appointed a CEO of our business, our our business unit, and my partner and I then went on a acquisition, mergers and acquisitions trail for them. And we actually acquired nine businesses over a period of eighteen months for that entity. Grew the share price fifteen times over that pi over that time. So there's a lot of

Jeff Holman (08:14)

Can I ask a couple questions? 'Cause I and some will be business, some won't, but briefly, w six thousand feet down in a mine, what does w what what does that mean? paint a picture for me 'cause I've I've never been down there.

Rael Bricker (08:28)

It is a a rock temperature of ninety Fahrenheit or thirty seven, thirty five degrees Celsius underground. it is dusty, it is dangerous. you know, we live we I worked on a mine where we celebrated we had fifty thousand staff on the mine and we celebrated the number of shifts with no fatalities. That was the the

Weirdly, today I don't think you would ever do that because of the negative mindset of no fatalities. You'd rather, you know, celebrate positivity. But in those days, we celebrated the non negativity. That makes sense. It was weird. You you celebrated, you know. working so so in the once you came out of the the what they what what they called the cage, and the the lift was called the cage, and it was literally a metal cage. When you got underground

the the first area you saw was okay. It was a a ten foot high passageway that led to wherever down the down the way. But then when you got into the working areas, there were sections of that mine. Now gold mining. Smaller and smaller because gold mining itself in so in California, the gold rush, there was nuggets, right? So they were looking for big gold nuggets in various places. In South Africa, the gold is very deep, six thousand foot.

And it is in a seam probably no more than two centimeters, three centimeters, so one inch or one and a half inches.

Jeff Holman (09:59)

So you're just following seams along.

Rael Bricker (10:01)

You look

for the seam and obviously you want to get out as little rock as possible because the rest of the rock is waste. Yeah. Yeah. And so there were t there were areas we worked in that were seven hundred mils high. So, you know it crazy stuff where you went in on your stomach or your back 'cause you couldn't roll over. I'm a I'm a as I say in Australia a big unit. I'm I'm I'm built I'm I'm a big I'm a big boy.

Jeff Holman (10:24)

You're not a seventy mil guy, huh?

Rael Bricker (10:26)

Yeah, and and there were times I couldn't roll over in them in the working areas. You either went in on your stomach or your back. You crawled in. Yeah, yeah. To the working areas. And then so so that was it. And then you so majority of work was manual labor. We weren't as an engineer, I wore a white overall, not a blue overall, which is just a weird distinction there. And which is kind of crazy white overall in that environment. Yeah.

Jeff Holman (10:52)

Yeah.

Rael Bricker (10:53)

I wasn't white for very long, but labor was cheap. So you came out

out from underground, you dropped your overall and there were there was a a an attendant in the change room for engineers who would go and wash your overall and hang it up for you for the next day.

Jeff Holman (11:07)

I see. Well take me take me I mean, not to jump too much, but take me to the 'cause you you mentioned, you know, building this education business, having four or five thousand people there, but w y you you kind of casually mentioned being threatened with a an AK forty seven one day and that being the impetus to sell the building. Is that i is that i is that a result of having a a successful business and maybe being a foreigner not not fitting in?

Rael Bricker (11:34)

It

was it was a a result of lot of things. at the time there was a lot of so universities around the world have always been beds of activism, you know, left wing activism. Okay. And we chose our premises and our building to be across the road from the major university in Johannesburg. And so sometimes the line between a private enterprise like ours and a public enterprise like the university was very blurred. Okay. And so that was the first thing. So there was also

you know, union activism and people who'd come into our offices and go, Hey, we demand. which is interesting because it was a private entity. So that that's so that's a bit of a context. What happened is we chose early on in our in our business that we knew that the students coming to our our our courses had traveled probably an hour, an hour and a half from the traditional black areas in South Africa. they hadn't had any food.

And obviously sugar levels were pretty low. And so we gave them free tea and coffee and biscuits every single day. That was a big expense in the business. Anyway,

Jeff Holman (12:41)

Anyway,

Rael Bricker (12:42)

so that so so that that's what we gave them. On this particular day, behind our building, there was a a petrol station where a lot of the taxis, and we're not talking about taxis, these are minivans, 15 seaters or 14 seater minivans.

They provided a lot of the transport in South Africa in South Africa for the black population. They used to park at this petrol station behind our building. And one of our students had a cup of coffee on a windowsill and threw it out the window because he thought it was a joke. This is how petty this the the the the situation was and how inflammatory it was. Not only was all there's activism, he threw this out over a taxi. So the taxi driver came into the office and said to us,

Can he talk to the students? Because somebody thought it was a joke to dirty his clean taxi. That was the extent of it. So I said, sure. So I took him up to that classroom. We're speaking to the students and he's speaking in the local language, which I understood. And the next thing he took off his jacket and had an AK forty seven in his hands.

Jeff Holman (13:43)

Was that common for taxi dri taxi drivers?

Rael Bricker (13:45)

Yeah,

so taxi wars, the war between the rival gangs who ran the taxi situation was

Jeff Holman (13:52)

yeah, yeah. Okay. So this was

Rael Bricker (13:54)

Stick to the students.

Jeff Holman (13:55)

that was a that was a that was a a a business run by deeper root groups.

Rael Bricker (14:03)

But much deeper roots by by yeah, it was it was a crazy, crazy business 'cause it was hugely lucrative because there was no public transport. Wow anyway, this guy then waved this this AK forty seven, pointed at me, pointed at the students, and basically said, Next time somebody does something like that, he's just gonna take out his gun and shoot through the window. Okay. And it was at that point that I went, That's it. I'm out of here. Like

Like it took me another six months to find the right entity to reverse the business into. Sure. And and and then I you know, it was an amazing journey going into venture capital, doing all the acquisitions. But that those are the sorts of experiences that really shape the the the things I do for businesses today. Yeah. You know, it it's how those things worked out. And then three years later I went into venture capital consulting after that, after I left the group, and then moved to Australia in ninety nine. So that's the sort of first part of my business journey.

And joined a venture capital fund in Australia that I listed on the stock exchange 18 months later and raised twenty-two in those days. You know, we we're talking two thousand. We raised twenty two million. It was a very small fund. We raised twenty two million dollars and listed that fund as a front door listing on the Australian Stock Exchange. Okay. Again, I wasn't I wasn't a major shareholder, I was a minor shareholder. I joined them and then they wanted me to move to the East Coast and I went, I love living on the West Coast.

And I'm going to stay on my own and and went out on my own in two thousand and one and ended up starting the House and Home Group, which I still own today. So so that started out as a consultancy. Again, pivoted from a consultancy in venture capital to people saying, we need a loan for our business. And I went, Okay, let's find out how to get you a loan. I have no idea. But I found out how to get a a loan and I started a loan business. And then they said you did so well. Can you do our home loan for us? And I went,

Sure, I'll do your mortgage for you. And and I still own the business and we've just topped through three point five billion in mortgages. So Wow.

Jeff Holman (16:04)

Th is it is this a common path? Like it it doesn't seem like it is to me, but I'm not from Australia. Or that do you have a lot of friends who followed a path like like you've just described, or is this a pretty unique path?

Rael Bricker (16:16)

No, so a lot of my friends are have been in business twenty years or twenty five years in their own businesses. And it it's always funny because we have some friends who are professionals. I mean, I'm I I have two master's degrees, so I guess I have to call myself professional, right? Yeah. But but I have friends who are doctors and and and lawyers and accountants who are in in not in their own business but in practice, in in some form of practice. Sure. And the standing joke in our social circle is how the entrepreneurs manage to

right off their business trips to to Europe on a boat.

Jeff Holman (16:50)

Okay, right.

Rael Bricker (16:52)

whereas, you know, the corporates can't do that. When you're in a corporate and you're on a salary, you the n the deductibility of certain things is quite restricted as one aspect of it. But but in our circles, probably half of our friends are like professionals, mostly medical, who have been they're either, you know, so one, you know, a couple radiologists, a couple

Wh which are big practices and others are, you know, doctors in their own practice. But they don't see themselves as entrepreneurs. Even a doctor in their own practice doesn't see themselves as an opp entrepreneur. They see themselves as a doctor in practice. It's an interesting mindset shift. but I I think I get bored easily, and I've always been told I get bored easily. And so that's probably an ADHD trait, and definitely an ADHD trait. And so based on that.

I I've been a collector of experiences. My late father, my father died in nineteen ninety nine, so it's you know a number of twenty seven years ago now. But he always said to me, and unfortunately he died in his fifties, so yeah. but he always said one day when he retired he wanted forty years experience, not one year forty times over. and I think that's almost philosophically driven everything I've done. I yeah, I just want to do

I want different experiences. The year after I I sold out in South Africa, I was under restraint of trade. I went and got my pilot's license, private pilot's license. I went and did a course in holistic healing and massage. Okay. Just because I was interested. Have I ever worked as a massage therapist? No. My wife gets the benefit of that. But but the truth of it is I learnt about the body. I learned about holistic healing.

And I learnt about things that made that were making it interesting for me.

Jeff Holman (18:44)

Yeah.

Well you say you're bored, but you're you're clearly a learner and a doer too. You're not just sitting around bored. You are

Rael Bricker (18:51)

No, no, definitely not. Yeah. So my and I'm not a hundred percent sure when this episode drops, but over the last week I posted a lot of stuff on social media about my w my my project last weekend.

Jeff Holman (19:03)

Okay.

Rael Bricker (19:04)

Brought all my creativity and my engineering skill together to put a laminated wood board together for a cocktail party that we're having at my house next week. And it's a six hundred mil by six hundred miles.

board made out of six different woods with a stand on it and I made that in a weekend in my garage.

Jeff Holman (19:26)

You're like, I've got time to do something. I might as well make a

Rael Bricker (19:30)

Well I

I I wanted to learn a skill. I wanted to learn how to laminate multiple different timbers together and s to be strong enough to be able to cut the edges nicely and give it a nice bevel and and wax it as a completely smooth surface that's food safe to be able to do it. It was a skill I wanted to learn in you know, and so I do a lot of woodwork but I've never laminated wood. So again, that was just that's the kind of stuff I roll with, you know.

Jeff Holman (19:56)

I love that. y you know, some people have asked me, Why did you why did you when o I I've built a couple of houses or or you know, we've had contractors build houses, but I'm like, I actually want to do the electrical or I wanna do the tile or I wanna do the roof. And, you know, I've I've taken on some projects that I probably shouldn't have, but in in some respects. But but I feel like it's the same thing. I'm like, you know what? I I was at the time doing electrical engineering design work on, you know, commercial buildings, hospitals. And when I built my house, I'm like, I'd really like to

Like to wire this up and see how it goes. And you know, I I of course I s the the people at the electrical supply store said, We've never seen somebody w with this size of house use this much wire. But you know, so I was probably a little inefficient, but that wasn't the point, right? The point was just a skill. Learn it understand it, gain some perspective. And I think it really informed as I as I did more engineering before going into law school and stuff.

It it informed how I interacted with people a little bit differently because I'm like, what's on the plans really doesn't get implemented. Like you can't you can't just draw the line on the plans and all of a sudden the the wires go there, right? You've got to work it around everything. So I I think I can relate to this to this learning thing, this learning approach to life that you're talking about. And I I'm gonna I'm gonna have to reflect a little bit more on this this statement about forty years of experience instead of

one year forty times over. I think that's a a meaningful statement. What wha what would you say? 'Cause you've you've taken all of this experience, right? And and at some point you you've still got your house and home business, it's still it's still flourishing, but you've taken and you've added on another aspect to what you're doing. You know, tell me about that transition.

Rael Bricker (21:41)

My house and home business was built a lot by me being on stage. So I was approached in the early two thousands, two thousand three, four by a big property investment group who asked me to do some workshops for their members on how to buy property, how to finance, et cetera. And I didn't come from a banking background, but I had my finance business already. And I spoke in English, not in bank speak. Yeah. And

I've sold a billion dollars from stage. I've sold a billion dollars of mortgages from stage and I only worked that number out many years later. But for me it was just generating business for House and Home Group.

Jeff Holman (22:18)

Okay.

Rael Bricker (22:19)

and I would basically do a talk and then I'd have a queue of people there waiting to meet me and make appointments in my diary. And it was literally that was it was I was selling without selling and that's something I talk about on stage.

Jeff Holman (22:32)

Two thousand

six and were a celebrity. It's it's you had some status, right?

Rael Bricker (22:36)

I had some status because I was talking to people and words I understood. Yeah. You know. And so two thousand and thirteen, I was training for a marathon. I just finished a season of triathlons. I mean, put into a context, I've always been a sportsman. I was a state hockey player. I played that's hockey, not ice hockey, that's field hockey. Around all on grass. Yeah. and then I broke a kneecap, so I stopped playing hockey.

But I've always done sports. I've always done individual sports, you know, team sports, whatever. I still play in my six early sixties, I still play Masters hockey. Love

it. At a fairly high level. So anyway, I was training from marathon and every run at about ten or twelve kilometers of running, I would get pain in my neck.

Jeff Holman (23:22)

Really?

Rael Bricker (23:23)

And I thought I'm a big unit. I'm I'm a you know, I'm not built like a runner, I'm not a s a s a th thinner, skinnier guy that

That's a runner. I'm I'm obviously moving my body badly. And so I'd go for physiotherapy and they'd rub my neck and my shoulders and then I'd feel better and I'd go for my next run and get neck pain. And my doctor said, There's something else inherently wrong here. go for a CT scan of your heart, which is something I recommend to every person over the age of fifty now. Is and not and I have no interest in what what the

Jeff Holman (23:53)

What?

Rael Bricker (23:54)

radiologist charge for that. But I went for a C T scan of my heart and a stress test.

And he called me. I was away in Singapore with my wife and he called me and he said, Don't panic. And that's not the one thing you want to hear from your doctor. He said, Don't panic, but you have blocked arteries and I'm sending you to a cardiologist next week when you're back from Singapore. And don't go for any long runs, go and buy some aspirin and start taking aspirin urgently. so I came back and I saw the cardiologist. I ended up with two cardiac stents. I was the lucky one. I d avoided the heart attack.

But if I'd carried on training, I would have had a heart attack. And then once I was in recovery from that, I kind of sat down and said, What am I passionate about? And I was passionate about being on stage. I absolutely love the adrenaline and the high you get from being on stage. And so I said, Well, how do I translate that? I've done all these things, I've built these businesses. Right. How do I translate that into something on stage? And so I shifted my focus.

to developing a career as a professional speaker.

Jeff Holman (25:02)

Hmm.

Rael Bricker (25:03)

And yeah, I started out doing that in 2015 was my first paid gig, like first paid actual paid to be on stage, which was pretty cool. And in 2019, 2020, actually early twenty, the weekend that COVID started around the world.

I was awarded a certified speaking professional. There's less than 12% of speakers in the world are certified speaking professionals.

Jeff Holman (25:30)

Okay.

Rael Bricker (25:30)

And so I built this career as a speaker and I branded it. So originally I branded, and we talk about breakouts. I came up with this idea of the excellence guy. I wanted to be known as something, and I came up with this definition of excellence, which is showing up as the best version of yourself every day. Okay. And I spoke about being the excellence guy.

About five, four years ago, I was thinking about what that meant and I thought the excellence guy's about me. It's not about my client. And so I shifted the branding from the excellence guy to the excellence project. Because the excellence project now helps you as a CEO. It's not about me anymore. It's about you and your business. And so I rebranded this idea of the Excellence Project about four years ago.

Jeff Holman (26:18)

Okay. Well and w and what does a CEO who's either listening to you speak or or working with you in some other capacity what w what kind of transformations do they see? Where do they start? What do they work on? And and where do they end up

Rael Bricker (26:33)

with you. So so I I again i evolution is my favorite word. If everything evolves, right? And so I evolved a model which is I used to call the four pillars of optimism and and now I call it the rise model and I'll explain the difference in a second. But essentially why optimism, not inspiration? Because inspiration fades by lunchtime when when the sh when when the when when the crack hits the fan, you know, that's when

inspiration fades, but optimism is a is a defined strategy. So what is that strategy? The simplest definition I I want CEOs to walk into the room and the standard wording that a lot of people use is we tried that and it failed. Or, you know, we did that last week or last year or last month. And I say to them, right, when you drove here this morning or caught whatever, you put Waze or Google Maps on in your car.

The first thing that Google Maps did is it asked you where do you want to go from here? It didn't say, where were you yesterday? And so mindset wise, that's the first big mindset shift is I call the GPS approach to life in business. Is if you've got an endemic problem in your business, right? You've got theft in your warehouse, you've got, you know, your logistics don't work, your orders are getting out late, you have to fix those logistic problems or endemic problems.

from a mindset of your team perspective, if you use this GPS approach and you say, we don't care where we were yesterday, let's let let's draw a line in the sand. And so that's the first of these transformations is going, where do we want to go from here? The second thing is when I was a pilot, when I was flying planes many years ago, the early GPSs were just coming out, and all they did was they pointed you in a straight line.

Whereas today Google Maps always tells you go left, go right, go left, go right. Yeah. And that fundamentally is the second shift, mind shift, is it's all very well as a CEO to say that's where we want to go. That's the end position of where we want to be. But if you don't take your staff and convince them of the journey by small steps, by going left, going right, going left, going right, all they're seeing, and that was an analogy from my days of training from Marathon.

I got a running coach because I'm a hockey player. I run fifty meters one direction, fifty meters another direction, carrying a stick. Yeah. Okay. I've never done long distance running. I got this running coach, he took me to the bottom of a hill and he said, run up the hill. And I said, You mad. I run fifty meters, you know, and then I'm done. And he said to me, Don't look at the top of the mountain. Yeah. Look at your feet. And then every step you take it sounds like a song, every step you take. But

Jeff Holman (29:24)

That is a song. A great song.

Rael Bricker (29:26)

step

you take, and suddenly you look up, you're at the top of the mountain. Yeah. And so that's exactly that same GPS approach. That's one of the stories I tell on stage about my marathon training. And I and I've got photographs of me running up hills. But that's what it's about. It's about imagining the hill but looking down at your feet. So that's one of the transformations that we get them to think about is how do you how do you paint the big picture? And that was my frustrations working on the mine.

The the CEOs, the bosses that I worked with never painted the big picture. They only told me about my task for tomorrow. And I think there has to be that balance of my task for tomorrow and how does that task fit into the overall strategy of the business? So that's what I do. The Rise model talks about those four things R I S and E, but it talks about raising a vision,

Jeff Holman (30:21)

Mm-hmm.

Rael Bricker (30:21)

inspiring the team and

And I use something based around disc, you know, the disc programs, been around since nineteen twenty nine, almost a hundred years. But I use it as red, yellow, green, and blue, four different colors. And I talk to them about how you communicate that vision to your team. The third pillar, okay, is is the strengths, is finding out what what worked in your business. Yeah. So if you think about every CEO you've ever dealt with, when you ask them what's worked, they start off the sentence with what didn't work.

All right.

Jeff Holman (30:53)

Well first we tried this and it didn't work, but yeah, they'd be they

Rael Bricker (30:57)

From a mindset perspective, if you change from problem to possibility, okay, you say what worked for us and how do we reduplicate that? Again, these are all mindset shifts. And I've got exercises that I do with them and workbooks, and we go through how do you find what's worked for you in the past. Yeah. And then how do you duplicate that? And there's a a rider to that. If you've got a great staff member who does great stuff.

Don't get the other staff to duplicate them. Okay, because they can't. It's what that person's doing from the heart, hopefully from the heart. What you want them to do is find their own individual strengths and duplicate those. Because that they own. That's what they own. And then the last is is the the E of rise is is to go and do the step by step approach, the incremental approach.

Okay, step by step approach to to implementing everything we've done. And so that brings it together and and Rise the idea of Rise is to go out, to lift up, to whatever. So there's there's a lot of, you know, subtle stuff around that model. But those are the four pillars, that incremental events that you put in and and that brings it all together and that's what the whole basis of everything I do with companies is about.

Jeff Holman (32:20)

I lo thank you for explaining that framework. I think it's great. And I think there may be one other part that in some of the stuff that I we either talked about or I read, you also talk about naive confidence and deliberate confidence a little bit, don't you?

Rael Bricker (32:33)

Well, so in in in the front of my book and and I'm happy by the way for your your listeners to download a free copy of the website under free stuff under the railbreaker dot com website. And there are there there are three things on on the site. look the one is the free copy of my book. The second one is a free assessment of their own behavioral colour, so based on the disc. And the third is their own positioning on the Rise framework. So the Rise leadership matrix, two by two matrix.

And really looks at where do you as a CEO sit on that matrix. Okay? Yeah. so so but I also speak in the book because I wrote the book w A the first version of it eight years ago, and I suppose spoke about the fact that in my fifty odd years at the time, I had confused arrogance, overconfidence, and confidence. And sometimes I'd mix those three up.

And and how the arrogance had actually probably cost me a lot of money in my in my life. Yeah. Because you couldn't once you're arrogant, you can't see the wood for the trees. Because all you see is your own ego. Yeah. And and and I guess as I've got older and more mature, I've kind of learnt about that. But the idea of and and then I've brought that through to my optimism. Everything I do is talking about optimism. And it's not blind positivity. It's actually a strategic approach to being optimistic.

to showing your team is vision and showing you the steps to get to that vision. That changes that naivety or the blind optimism or blind positivity to a framework that people can embrace.

Jeff Holman (34:13)

I see. Okay. That makes sense. and so when you talk with when you talk with CEOs about this, do you have an example of of a CEO you you've walked through the RISE framework or talked to them about this optimism, you know, confidence. What's an example of something of someone who's who's been through this and seen some type of transformation either either in their business or in themselves?

Rael Bricker (34:39)

So th there have been a lot. And interestingly, the the the biggest measure of transformation for me is the medium enterprise side rather than the lot the big end of talent. I've I've done a lot of work with the big mining companies and whatever, but that's a little bit like trying to turn the Titanic on a on a on a dime. Okay. It it it's the the i there's individual transformation. So I get messages on LinkedIn from people going

Wow, I went to work the next day and I, you know, I really looked at what I was doing and I and I worked out the steps and I thought, great, I got success with this last week and I'm doing it now. That's individual transformation and that's what makes me happy. I I found the best success has been I did some work with a number of different groups. One of them was a big building franchise group, where they had franchise operations around Australia and they all came together. we did about three hours with them.

Yeah. But it was about the the getting the entrepreneurs who are running those individual franchises to take a breath and go, Where what am I good at? What are my strengths? What makes my franchise successful? And the feedback I've had from those individual franchisees has been quite amazing. Where they've suddenly taken this breath and gone, Okay, you know what? I worked out that we are good at X.

you know, timber framing, whatever the case may be, and that I needed to build up skills in Y, and I got my team around me and we said, these are what we're good at. Let's focus on those and let's bring in the skills that we need. But without focusing on it, they were only seeing the big picture. When they suddenly broke it down into what steps do we have to take, they realized where their strengths were.

Jeff Holman (36:30)

I well that's hard that's hard for people to see without somebody to help guide them sometimes 'cause you get either so busy in in the detailed, you know, in the in the work itself that you don't have time to reflect, or sometimes, you know, even if you take the time to reflect, you might not know what you're looking for exactly.

Rael Bricker (36:47)

absolutely. And th that, you know, again, my late father used to tell me that the the definition of a consultant was was somebody who who steals your watch and sells you back the time. he had others. He said a consultant was also someone who was ha knew a hundred and one different ways of making love and didn't have a girlfriend. Yeah. Okay. But but that

truly is what it is. Sometimes the the role of the consultant is the mirror. You know, it's it's it's that mentor role as opposed to the it's a mentoring role as opposed to a coaching role. And and I and I'll define those two very quickly. The the mentor is someone who is the mirror on the CEO. Who they can look at and say, do I look good today? Okay. you know and

in in in in the mirror context, but in in the business context. Whereas the coach and and and and we've just been through the World Cup as, you know, it would have probably taken over everywhere in the world as it did, and you'd see the coaches screaming instructions from the side of the field. And I think that's the subtlety is the coach actually tells people, Move yourself to that position on the field in order to do something, because they are trying to direct the play. Yeah.

Whereas the mentor, which is much more as I see my role, is that mirror on the CEO, is is being the sounding board, is being does the sanity checks. I have my own mentors and my own mentors on my sanity checks. I go to them and I go, Have I lost the plot or is this making sense? No.

Jeff Holman (38:34)

That makes sense. Yeah. Well s it's so i if somebody if somebody hears this episode and they say, Man, I I think I should get a hold of Rail or I should read his book, it sounds like you got stuff on your website. Is that how most people get a hold of you?

Rael Bricker (38:47)

Mo w website or LinkedIn. Yeah. Very active on LinkedIn. But otherwise railbreaker dot com and there's that little tab on there called free stuff. There's a whole lot of free downloads and all other things that come off there. I don't I respond to every email myself. I have VAs and PAs, but I respond to every single email myself. As long as they're not trying to sell me junk bonds or something like that. which I get a lot of, as you would know. But for

But yeah, no absolutely railbreaker dot com or rail at railbreaker dot com is my email. Send me an email and I'll always answer it.

Jeff Holman (39:21)

Great. We'll we'll we'll share that. I want to know as we as we kind of wind up here, what would you say is you know, you get your frameworks and you've got the stuff that you talk about on the stage, but but if you were to have a a sit down, you know, one on one with a with a new CEO who's stepped into the scaling role or the scaling stage of their business, and they're let's just say they're pretty fresh, they they're maybe a little overwhelmed.

What what kind of advice would you give them to help them keep that level of optimism that that you talk about?

Rael Bricker (39:57)

The first is being able to succinctly define and and I hate the terms vision and mission, but I use the word vision as where does the CEO see the business going rather than that thing that's stuck on a wall that's pretty generic called the vision statement or the mission statement, right? So so it's about being able to define the vision and share that vision with the team. And so a lot of the time I say to the CEO, right, close your eyes.

And they think I'm you know doing the the the the the meditation with them then. I say close your eyes and then imagine what the business will look like when you've achieved what you want to achieve. Yeah. So just close your eyes and have that vision. And then open your eyes and now explain to me what happened from the before you close your eyes to after you opened your eyes again.

And that defines the vision. That defines the path of where you're going. Because you can see the endpoint. Yeah. And you can see clearly. And and and in our brains, our brains can't distinguish between vividly imagined reality and reality itself. And so if you vividly imagine the reality of where you want the business to be, or life for that matter, it applies equally in life. If you vividly imagine where you want to be.

And then you open your eyes and you go, Okay, how did I go from there to there? That's the GPS. That's the steps I took to get there. And so that's the starting point. Is the CEO sitting there going, my god, what's just hit me? I don't know where I am. I say, close your eyes, breathe, close your eyes. And just get a picture in your head of where you want to be. As as crazy, as weird, as well out there as you can imagine, that's okay too. Just imagine it.

And then open your eyes and now let's work out what steps you took to get there. Yeah. So it sort of jumps forward and backward, but that's the starting point. And then you have to go, right, okay. So you want this first step to be here. Great. Now let's work out what resources do you need? What and then I get into the strategy. I I've developed there there's something called the BMC, the business model canvas, which is a nine block model.

I've simplified it because most people can't think in nine blocks. They can think in five. So I've simplified the BMC to my own plan on a page in five blocks. Okay. And I'll sit down with the CEO and go, right, let's fill in those five blocks. What resources do you need to deliver on your vision? And what is the impact on your customers and what's your revenue and what's your cost base? Those are the five

Jeff Holman (42:39)

Oops.

Rael Bricker (42:40)

that I look at. And so then it becomes a more technical, you know, consulting type work.

where we get them to work through those blocks. another tool that I've developed, it's called the Business Excellence Indicator, which is a company wide anonymous survey that tells you where you sit on the on the three criteria i in the business, okay, of leadership and the two Cree ones there are leadership and strategy. Okay. And culture is the third, leadership struct strategy and culture. But where do the team see the business sitting?

And that's that's informed feedback for the CEO. So then you go through process of making changes, positive changes, hopefully, and then you measure again and you measure until we have a definitive measure of the impact.

Jeff Holman (43:29)

Okay. How how would somebody know if they're like if they're listening to all of this and they're saying, like I think I could use this, I think that like there's some there's some wisdom here that I don't not sure how to put it in my business. W what would that person be, you know, noticing about themselves or their situation where they where they could say, this this is a trigger, I should probably I should probably seek some some guidance, some help.

Rael Bricker (43:55)

I mean

I I I spend a lot of time having a one on one, don't charge for that exploratory call just to chat to people and see how they go. Yeah. what would they notice? They'd notice a frustration with the team not embracing or embodying their vision. Because if they don't have the vision, that's the first problem, right? So if they're going, I'm I'm I'm too involved in the day to day r treadmill, I'm a little bit like the hamster on the wheel.

and I'm not I'm not stepping away from it for a few seconds or a few days or a few weeks to actually see the the wheel from the outside. What I'm seeing is myself running on this treadmill. Yeah. Then it there's a time you have to get off it. And sometimes they go so so again, one of the breakthrough moments in my business, it's called the breakthrough CO, right? The the breakthrough moments in my financial services business was twenty years ago when I went from eighteen finance brokers in my business

down to ten and I employed my first assistant to help them process their mortgage app applications for their clients. That shift, and I call it giving up control to gain control. Yeah. That shift where my team suddenly went, I've got somebody I can hand the paperwork to, trust them to do a good job, and I can do what I do best. That mindset shift changed my business. And that person is now my general manager and he's been with me twenty years.

That I employed 20 years ago. So, so that mindset shift, that's what I'm looking for, is that that one thing that's going to make them more efficient in their day-to-day operations. And I'm all about practical. I'm all about practical stuff. I'm not about the theories. It's what makes you more efficient? What what gets you to the office at nine o'clock instead of six o'clock in the morning because you just see this mountain of paperwork on your desk?

Jeff Holman (45:52)

Well, so somebody would be saying to themselves, they're like something feels off, my team feels misaligned. Maybe pat we're we're we're maybe describing Patrick Lincioni's dysfunctional team, right? concept. So but not knowing where to turn means, hey, maybe it's time to get an outside perspective. So

Rael Bricker (46:12)

that's what a as I said, that's what the role of the consultant is. It is that mirror. It is that that mental mirror. Yeah. It is not necessarily someone you know, lots of people talk about the entrepreneurial operating system and they're trying they implement the entrepreneurial operating system into businesses. I don't I don't think I think it has some good benefits, th the the EOS framework. So it's just I'm not I'm not panning it. But what I think is it's about

core it's about what's the right thing for that business. You can't have a one size fits all model. It's about that mirror, the person looking in the mirror and going, Wow, I don't look very good. Why am I not looking good? and let's work out why, you know, what can make you look better in in in the mirror context, but but it's about what are the challenges for you not feeling good. Yeah.

Jeff Holman (47:04)

Yeah, no, I I always I always chuckle a little bit when I see people say, you know, download our strategy for your XYZ business. It's like the i i if it's if it's a it's a if it's a one size fits all strategy, it's then you know, clearly not a strategy.

Rael Bricker (47:20)

Yeah, and and that's that that is the problem I see is that there are lots of people who go, I'm gonna be a consultant. And a lot of the big four, big five consulting firms do that. Yeah. You know, they have a they have a a a a a square peg and around hole type model and they're gonna shove everyone through that that's that's that that hole.

Jeff Holman (47:38)

Well, it gets back to the where where you kind of said you started, right? You you started it six six thousand feet down in a mine, eventually managing five thousand people and maybe maybe not having the experience I think you mentioned that

Rael Bricker (47:51)

Yeah, not having these and only understanding that years later. Yeah. Because again, I was on the treadmill. I was on that I was the hamster on the wheel. Yeah. It was, you know, got up in the morning, I'd go to the mine shaft, I would do the early morning meetings, I would put my overall on, I'd go underground, I'd, you know, wave and greet people underground and solve problems and then get back up and have a shower and greet them when they came out from underground. And it was that hamster on the treadmill. Because I never saw the bigger picture. Right.

I never saw how our operations, if we increased by one percent efficiency, what would be the impact on the whole mile? And that was something that was never really discussed.

Jeff Holman (48:31)

Well, it just takes time, right? And that's why that's why it's it's kind of beautiful that you're now taking the moment and the experience that you've gathered. I I don't know that it's forty years of experience as your father said, but you're you're well on your way, right? To to toward that forty years of experience. So great that you can bring that to the people that you're working with and also to our audience. That's that's special for us.

Rael Bricker (48:56)

And yeah, absolutely. And as I said, I I respond to every email. I've got lots of stuff. I've I'm fairly active on LinkedIn with new material, blogs and posts and thoughts and and a lot of those are driven by driving down the road. I I posted a blog two weeks or three weeks ago on the d there are two rideshare services, big rideshare services in Australia, Uber obviously, and an Indian competitor called Diddy. Yeah. And Diddy advertises the same driver different price.

But their service offering is terrible. and I and I considered why that was and why, you know, is price the driver and price is not the driver of everything. And so that that seeing that sign on the side of a car triggered a whole block. Yeah. And and that's what I try and get people to be open to. Driving down the road, seeing a sign and going, that triggers something for me. Let me think about that idea.

Jeff Holman (49:52)

taking the time to reflect back and say maybe maybe there's something here for me to to to take away, learn, apply to my business. And again, getting back to the fact that you're you're you're always on a learning journey. So well I absolutely Rail, I really appreciate you coming and joining me on the the Breakout CEO podcast today because our listeners are on their their learning journeys too. And to be able to, you know, gather some insights and experiences from what from the journey you've been on, maybe there's something they can take away in their businesses. Maybe they want to call you and

and and get more insight from you to for their businesses. But really appreciate you spending the time to to share those insights with us.

Rael Bricker (50:29)

Fantastic. It's been a great conversation, a really great flow of conversation. So thank you very much, Jeff.

Jeff Holman (50:35)

thank you. And and thanks to all of our listeners out there who joined us on today's episode of the Breakout CEO. Be sure to follow or subscribe on your favorite podcast platform. And if you enjoy the show, a rating or a review goes a long way. Our mission is to promote the stories of breakout CEOs in scaling SaaS, e-commerce, and tech companies to equip peer CEOs with valuable perspectives and confidence.

Thanks again for joining us on this episode of the Breakout CEO. I'm Jeff Holman, and I'll see you next time.

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